>>>What do you have from truly independent sources concerning the viability of ethanol without subsidies?<<<
Again, the issue of subsidies is irrelevant until you factor in the subsidies into the cost of petrol. I've provided documentation that shows petrol is far more subsidized than ethanol. Can you disprove that or not?
Those studies include Michael Wang's formulas that are also under contention from the academic community.
Also, the study was updated last year and still had the same results. Read the new study that was accepted into the National Resources Research Volume 14 if you want the facts.
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/NRRethanol.2005.pdf
Some BERKELEY colleagues of their favorite oil-loving communist weigh in:
Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals
Alexander E. Farrell,1* Richard J. Plevin,1 Brian T. Turner,1,2 Andrew D. Jones,1 Michael O'Hare,2 Daniel M. Kammen1,2,3
To study the potential effects of increased biofuel use, we evaluated six representative analyses of fuel ethanol. Studies that reported negative net energy incorrectly ignored coproducts and used some obsolete data. All studies indicated that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline. However, many important environmental effects of biofuel production are poorly understood. New metrics that measure specific resource inputs are developed, but further research into environmental metrics is needed. Nonetheless, it is already clear that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology.
Link: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5760/506
Bring on the cellulose technology...we've plenty of cornstalks to get rid of!